The present invention relates generally to sun visors for vehicles, and more particularly, to a sun visor having a molded plastic core member.
It is well known to provide a sun visor for the windshield of a vehicle, e.g., an automobile for shielding the eyes of the driver and front seat passenger from harsh direct or glaring light, primarily sunlight. Conventional sun visors have been constructed with a solid inner core board of a pressed wood material, and an outer cloth covering of foam-backed cloth that is sewn along a seam circumjacent the periphery of the core board. If it is desired to provide components such as a mirror, electrical circuitry for lighting the mirror, and an extender for increasing the coverage of the sun visor, it has been necessary to mount these components onto a side of the inner core board. The addition of these components tends to increase the thickness of the sun visor. In addition, a separate assembly operation is required to mount each component onto the core board, resulting in an accumulation of tolerances of the components as well as an accumulated variation introduced by each assembly operation.
In recent years, visor assemblies have been constructed with molded plastic core members. Typically, these are molded of a plastic material in two half sections or clam shells joined together by a hinge. The half sections form a cavity or recess within the core, into which the internal components such as the lighting circuitry including lamps and mirror are all located. The core halves are then pressed together and bonded by a heat sealing operation or the like.
In U.S. Pat. No. 5,054,839, issued to White, et al., a plastic core sun visor is disclosed in which the core members 12 and 14 are each covered with an upholstery material 16 and are then locked together by the engagement of rigid pins 44 extending inwardly adjacent the perimeter of one of the core members in snap-in engagement. A disadvantage with this design is that once the relatively expensive core mold has been built, there is no flexibility for changes in the overall size of the sun visor which are often required to accommodate varying sun visor size requirements in newly designed vehicles. Thus, if the size of an existing plastic core sun visor size is either too large or too small, a new mold must be made to change the size of the sun visor. It is desired to provide an improved sun visor that overcomes the above disadvantages.